Preventive agreement: flat tax on increased income arrives

A new discount is coming for those who adhere to the concordato preventivo. In fact, the flat tax on the higher income contained in the agreement with the tax authorities is coming. Substitute taxation 'graduated' on the basis of the grades obtained on the tax report cards. The Government is ready to open up to requests to make adhesion to the arrangement with creditors more attractive. Requests that will be formalised today by the productive categories and professionals at the hearing before the Finance Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate on the draft delegated decree introducing a series of corrective measures to the arrangement with creditors as well as to cooperative compliance and fulfilment.

In the hypothesis being considered by Parliament and the Government, the aim is to introduce an optional substitute taxation scheme that will be variable according to the grade achieved in the tax report cards of the tax period preceding the agreement. The basic concept is to reward the most virtuous with a lower rate. Thus, the levy will be 10 per cent for those with a mark of not less than eight, 12 per cent for those with a mark between six and eight, and 15 per cent for those with a mark below a pass.

A hypothesis on which the Executive will also be 'urged' by the opinions that will arrive from the Finance Committees chaired by Massimo Garavaglia (Lega) in the Senate and Marco Osnato (FdI) in the Chamber. The goal to be achieved, according to senators and deputies, is to make the concordat more attractive, so much so that the new 'flat tax' related to the reliability vote could be set as a condition to force the government to rewrite the concordat once again. The idea is to make the option for the flat tax on the higher business or self-employment income deriving from adherence to the concordato preventivo valid for both tax periods in which the agreement with the tax authorities is valid. But that is not all, because in fact a stabilisation path will also be outlined because the option for flat-rate taxation will also be valid for the following two-year period in the event of renewal.

An attempt to make inroads among the trade associations of artisans and the self-employed and among the accountants, who assist the VAT numbers concerned, in order to push adhesion to the arrangement. Not least because the instrument, according to the first proposed calculations (see 'Il Sole 24 Ore' of 18 June), runs the risk of asking a bill up to eight times higher from taxpayers who have demonstrated a lower fiscal reliability by achieving grades well below the threshold of eight on the report card. Nor seems to have dispelled the mistrust towards the agreement so far, the possibility of gradually arriving at the 10 on the report card required by the software, with an intermediate step that for the first year envisages a 50% reduction in income (and therefore in taxes due) as envisaged in the agreement.

"The incremental flat tax," emphasises Salvatore Regalbuto, national councillor of the Chartered Accountants delegated to taxation, "can also allow those who receive proposals with substantial concordat incomes, as happens in particular to taxpayers who are less 'reliable' fiscally, to adhere to the concordat, thus mitigating the outcomes of the Isa that, by their very nature, being based on large-scale statistical processing, sometimes do not fully grasp the peculiarities of the taxpayer's activity. At a hearing before the Finance Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the accountants will also propose the introduction of 'an absolute threshold of EUR 25,000, below which assessment activities are not possible, and the extension to flat-rate taxpayers of the full coverage from presumptive assessments already recognised to taxpayers who apply Isa'. A coverage that, Regalbuto further adds, for Isa subjects, must also be valid for VAT purposes and regardless of the score obtained in the tax report cards during the years in which the arrangement is in force.